On December 28, 1835, Brevet Major Francis L. Dade led 110 US Army soldiers down a narrow dirt road through a thick grove of pine trees in Central Florida. Every man scanned the surrounding brush, expecting an ambush from Seminole warriors at any moment. Then a shot rang out.
Dade cried out, “My god! ” and fell from his horse, shot through the heart, dead before he hit the ground. For a few seconds, chaos reigned. Shouts went out to form firing lines and bring up the 6-pound cannon, but no one knew where the shot had come from.
Then hundreds of shots rang out as 180 Seminole warriors who had been lying in wait unleashed volley after volley into the soldiers’ ranks. Within minutes, over half of the soldiers were dead. Panic took hold of the survivors as they realized they were completely surrounded. Some of the young men froze.
Some began to weep as their comrades continued to fall and Seminole war whoops filled the air. Captain G. W. Gardner, still standing in the middle of the road, barked out orders to the enlisted men.
His voice seemed to snap the men out of their terror, and they began maneuvering the cannon into position. Cries of “The gun! The gun! Bring up the gun!
” rang out, for they all knew this was their last remaining hope. Second Lieutenant William E. Basinger, the officer in charge of the artillery in the rear guard, ordered his men to begin firing. But the Seminole shot the horses attached to the cannon’s harness.
Within seconds, every horse lay on the ground in its death throes. The cannon now had to be hauled by the men themselves. Flushed with adrenaline, they struggled to move the hefty piece and made it ready to fire within a few minutes. But before a single volley could be loosed, every man in the firing crew was cut down.
Another crew took their places and managed to fire several 6-pound cannonballs into the surrounding Seminole positions. After a few shots, the Seminole recognized the soldiers’ pattern of fire. They began to maneuver toward the soldiers as the cannon was repositioned between shots. They would lay flat during the cannon fire, then pop up and fire.
When the cannon was adjusted again, they moved again, creeping closer and closer. Seeing the Seminole closing in, Basinger ordered the men to switch to canister shot, essentially a giant shotgun shell designed to spray an advancing enemy with hundreds of smaller rounds. As the Seminole warriors were met with these unavoidable projectiles, they finally broke their lines and retreated to the cover of the taller pine trees. As the warriors moved toward cover, their three chiefs exchanged pensive glances.
They were Micanopy, Alligator, and Otay Emathla. Veteran warriors elected to lead the attack. Conspicuously absent was Osceola, perhaps the most widely respected warrior among the tribe. Osceola had been arrested under the order of local Indian Affairs agent Wiley Thompson, who had attempted to force the chief to validate the Treaty of Payne’s Landing.
Osceola had vehemently refused, objecting to conditions that would see the Seminoles forced westward out of their traditional homelands. He was eventually released, and to his consternation, the treaty was signed by several other Seminole chiefs on May 9, 1832. But Osceola had made up his mind to exact revenge for his mistreatment. He had lit the fuse of the ongoing troubles, beginning a campaign of raiding through central Florida, seizing and holding the territory between Fort Brooke and Fort King.
On December 18, he and 80 warriors had held up a supply train south of Gainesville, killing or wounding 14 Americans. Now, on the day of the ambush, he was nowhere to be found. However, despite their ranks, the three chiefs knew they could do nothing to stop this retreat. Under Seminole rules of warfare, each warrior fought as an individual on a volunteer basis.
They had no obligation to the unwavering obedience expected of American soldiers. Once out of sight of the Americans, Chief Alligator began haranguing the fleeing warriors, admonishing them that this was likely their one and only chance to break the American government’s will for expansion into Seminole lands. A lengthy debate ensued with the younger warriors, who insisted they had already secured a sizable victory. After nearly an hour of animated discussion, Alligator delivered another rallying cry.
“Some of you say no,” he told them. “Are you drunk or sick or women to be afraid of a few white men? Have we forgotten why these soldiers are here? They are here to take our land, our homes, our lives.
They will enslave our blacks. They will come to round us up like cattle, like pigs, to put us on their boats and send us to the western land. This is our land. We did not come here today to leave it, but to fight for it.
So let us kill these soldiers. Let their death carry the message to the great Washington Mico, the great father Andrew Jackson, that though he may despise us for being Indian, for being Seminole, he must still look upon us as men. Go back. Go back and kill them all.
”
Just as Alligator finished, more Seminole warriors began arriving from the surrounding villages, eager to join the fight. The warriors reached a consensus. They would reconvene the attack and kill all of the American invaders. But they were about to find a far more entrenched enemy than they had first encountered.
While the Seminole had spent over an hour debating, the Americans under Captain Gardner had been fortifying their position. Gardner, nicknamed “the God of War” by his West Point classmates, ordered some men to cut down surrounding pine trees while others scoured the battlefield for wounded. The felled trees were stacked into a triangular barricade, the wounded were dragged inside, and the cannon was positioned on the northern corner. Under Gardner’s leadership, some of the young troops felt a spark of hope that perhaps they could hold off the attack and come out alive.
Then they heard the war cries. There were now even more warriors. But the men heeded Gardner’s orders as he resolutely barked commands to aim, fire, and reload. Caught again in a hailstorm of canister fire, the Seminole attack paused momentarily, only to redouble with even more ferocity.
As bullets and arrows poured into the cramped confines of the makeshift fort, Gardner continued commanding his men, seemingly unbothered by enemy fire. Meanwhile, the conspicuously absent Osceola was leading a raid of his own, striking Fort King itself. Though he deeply wanted to be present for the massacre of Dade’s column, he had decided he must first settle a personal score with his former jailer, Indian Affairs agent Wiley Thompson. He and several men took up positions outside the fort walls, waiting for Thompson to venture out on his daily walk.
After hours of waiting, Osceola finally spotted him. In short order, he ordered a volley loosed toward the officer. Moments later, Thompson fell dead, stricken by fourteen bullets. Osceola’s warriors swarmed upon his body and scalped him before disappearing back into the tree line.
The scalp was cut into small pieces and divided up among the warriors. With his revenge exacted, Osceola headed south, rushing toward the site of the ambush. Back inside the flimsy walls of the improvised fort, the surviving soldiers fought on under Captain Gardner’s command. But they no longer had the advantage of their cannon, and they were nearly entirely out of ammunition.
Still, Gardner directed their fire, giving them some measure of hope. Then, in the midst of barking out one of his orders, he was struck several times in the torso. Mortally wounded, he stumbled to a tree at one corner of the fort and collapsed into a seated position. With his terrified soldiers looking on, he uttered his last words: “I can give you no more, my lads.
Do your best. ” Then he slumped to the ground dead. Command fell to Lieutenant Basinger, who gallantly attempted to turn the young troops’ attention back to the oncoming attack. Minutes later, a Seminole bullet tore through both of his legs, sending him careening to the ground and leaving him completely immobilized.
All the remaining Americans knew the end was near. They were greeted by the horrifying sight of Seminole warriors in full regalia overrunning their position and cutting them down one by one. Within minutes, the Seminole had killed every single American soldier. Or so it seemed.
Under strict orders from their chiefs forbidding the warriors to loot anything more than weapons off the fallen, the Seminole began rifling through the American bodies. As they did so, they were shocked to see four American soldiers spring up still alive. One clubbed a Seminole warrior over the head, killing him, before trying to escape back down the trail. He was quickly shot down.
One began to beg for his life but was also shot down. The other two managed to escape into the tree line. They were privates Ransom Clark and Ewen De Coursey. They carried on for a day and a half before being tracked down by a group of Seminole warriors.
They decided to split up. De Coursey ran in one direction, Clark in another. Clark had been severely wounded and had only escaped through the adrenaline coursing through his body. As he struggled forward, growing weak from loss of blood, he suddenly heard a gunshot.
He knew what it meant. The only other survivor of the battle he knew of had been killed. He knew he was next. Too injured to move quickly, he heard the hoofbeats of Seminole horses heading his way and assumed he was a dead man.
A warrior riding a fleet-footed pony emerged from the brush, heading straight for him. Just as he reached Clark, he let out a vociferous war cry, wheeled his horse around, and rode away. Clark first thought it was a ruse, a way to torture him with fear before killing him. But the Seminole did not return.
Clark sank to his knees, nauseous with adrenaline, and muttered a quiet thanks to God. But he was still in great danger, stuck in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Seminole warriors and entirely alone. He faced a choice. He could retrace the army’s route back to Fort Brooke, a longer path but one that might take him away from the Seminole.
Or he could take the shorter route to Fort King through the very heart of Seminole territory. He decided to make his way back to Fort Brooke, beginning his arduous journey step by painful step, keeping a constant lookout. Meanwhile, the Seminole warriors had gathered in a camp not far from the battlefield. Much to their delight, Osceola and his warriors arrived.
Too late for the battle, but happy with the success of the day. He told them he, too, had achieved a great victory with the killing of Wiley Thompson at Fort King. A swell of victorious war cries rose into the air. The Seminole saw this not only as a great victory but as a sign of great revival.
After many years of mistreatment and subjugation, and after their devastating loss in the First Seminole War, many believed this was a sign from their gods that the Seminole would soon reign again in Florida. Three full days after the battle, guards on duty at Fort Brooke spotted the beleaguered figure of Private Ransom Clark limping toward the fort in great distress. His wounds were treated while he recalled the horrifying events of the massacre. It was the first news the men of Fort Brooke had heard of the attack, but few among them were surprised.
The next day, another soldier, Private Joseph Sprague, a final lone survivor of what would come to be known as the Dade Massacre, made his way to the fort uninjured, reporting the same losses. It was a humiliating and incredibly costly defeat for the US Army, which now feared another Seminole uprising. Rightfully so, for the Dade Massacre would be the beginning of the Second Seminole War. This was a far larger, more prolonged, and more costly affair than its predecessor.
This time, the army knew the only way it could finally take Florida was to remove the Seminole entirely. The Seminole knew this was now a war not over border disputes but to retain their way of life. The Second Seminole War lasted nearly seven years and cost the lives of nearly 5,000 people. The swamps and palmetto groves of Florida played host to some of the most ferocious warfare in American history.
By the time it was over, it spelled the beginning of the end for most of the Seminole people in their treasured homelands.